So, this paste. It might sound, like, weird that I’m telling you to make a paste. But, I’m pretty sure you should make it. We made it when we were making these spring rolls, and boy howdy. It was great. But it would also be excellent tossed into a stir fry or loosened up with more oil and made into a salad dressing.

If you like ginger, most definitely try this one. It’s pretty strong in the ginger department. Also, it’s bright green. BRIGHT green. So clearly, it’s the healthiest thing you could eat. Like, ever. Duh.

Blend together all ingredients except 1 tbsp oil until a thick paste is formed. Heat the remaining 1 tbsp oil in a skillet over medium heat until it’s pretty hot, but not burning, and toss in all of the paste. Cook for a minute or so, stirring, just until super fragrant. Scoop/pour into a bowl/ramekin to cool.

This banana bread recipe was my grandma’s. My mom still has a copy of the recipe that my grandma wrote on a card for her. It’s a small card, with cramped writing, spotted with years of batter droplets.

It’s the best. And I love it. And it smells like home and family and bananas and bread and sweet and yummy.. and so I’m telling you about it. Turns out, you can make it in the Bullet with the blender attachment. Who knew?

Grandma’s Banana Bread

Ingredients

2-3 bananas (or 4 if you’re using apple bananas like me!)

1/3 cup oil

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 3/4 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour a loaf pan. Blend up bananas, oil, and sugar. Add in eggs and blend for just a couple seconds, until beaten. Add in dry ingredients and pulse to mix, scraping the sides as necessary until just mixed together.

(If you have the blender attachment, you can make the entire bread in it; if you don’t, just mix up all the wet ingredients and pour them into the dry ingredients in a bowl.)

So, you may or may not have heard of this. It’s a thing called Eton Mess. If you’ve heard of it, you’ve probably eaten it. And you’re probably scoffing, like, who hasn’t heard of eton mess? It’s the easiest, most lazy-person dessert ever. If you haven’t heard of it, you’re probably all, uhhh, it doesn’t sound very good? Listen close.

Crunchy, airy, super sweet meringues, that you can totally buy at the store, plus sweet and tart fruit and all its juicy-juiceness, plus super soft, barely sweet, cloud-like whipped cream, that yeah, you totally just whipped up, NBD. All of it. On a big ol’ spoon. In your big ol’ mouth. (Sorry. I didn’t mean to say you had a big mouth. But that’s just how it went for me. I’m projecting).

Point is, go ahead and make this. Your friends will thank you. And love you. And think you’re super fancy.

Eton Mess

12 meringues

1/2 cup heavy whipping cream (or more, if you like)

1 peach, chopped into bite-size bits + 1/4 cup raspberries

2 tbsp sugar

Combine raspberries and peaches with 1 tbsp sugar in a bowl, and half mash half mix them together. Set aside. Combine the heavy cream plus the remaining tbsp of sugar in the short cup with the flat blade attached. Blend until whipped cream appears!

In four bowls or jars (or one big ol trifle dish if you have one), crumble up 1/2 the meringues. Scoop on some whipped cream, and top with fruit mixture. Repeat layers one more time. Eat immediately, this dessert doesn’t keep!

Please, don’t be fooled by the appearance of this sauce. Because I will admit it does not look very appetizing, because it’s, well, brown. But trust, trust in the power of the peanut. Because hooooly daaang. It’s good.

Pour it all over your veggies or rice or meat on a stick or whatever. Just find a way to eat it.

I don’t actually know if this counts as ranch dressing.. but it’s sure dang good. And sure only takes but a second to make. And is like, waaay better than that stuff you buy at the store. So, I’m gonna go ahead and call it ranch.

You could dip some veggies in it. Or pour it on a salad. Or, just, I don’t know.. drink it? Ha!

Sour Cream Ranch

1 tbsp mayonaise

1/4 cup sour cream

2 tsp mustard

2 tsp white wine vinegar (or more or less depending on how vinegar-y or liquidy you like it)

Dudes. Let’s talk about fruits. In specific, let’s go ahead and talk about fruit sauces. Y’know, the ones that usually basically look like purple glop and are overly sweet and don’t much resemble the fruit they came from. Those ones. Let’s go ahead and say we’ll never eat another one of those again. Not on a cheesecake or a scoop of ice cream or anything.

Instead, let’s all eat this sauce. Because it’s the best sauce. Because it’s a little sweet, but it’s mostly tart, and it’s so bright red, and it tastes like the fruit it is, only, you know, even better. Oh yeah, and also, it takes, like, ten seconds to make.

Go ahead. Do it.

Raspberry Sauce

1/2 cup (ish? make as much as you want, honestly) fresh raspberries (or strawberries or blackberries or boysenberries…)

Juice of 1/2 a lemon or lime

2 tbsp sugar

Blend. Strain through a mesh sieve if you’re not into seeds. Don’t if you’re lazy. Drizzle that sweet-tart gold all over, well, everything. But especially cake, and whipped cream, and ice cream, and cheesecake.. and.. well, yeah.

It’s not really summer until you’ve eaten your first watermelon. Preferably by biting straight into a piece way larger than your head, juice running all the way down to your elbows, followed by a watermelon-seed-spitting contest. Which, you’d probably lose if you were competing against me. Just kidding. Kind of.

But if you want to eat watermelon in front of a more, er, sophisticated? crowd, then look no further. Because these popsicles, well they’re just plain awesome. They’re pink and icy and sweet and sour, so obviously your kids (or your inner child) will love them, but they’ve got a little something special that makes them grown-up. Seriously. Trust. It’s the fanciest watermelon pops you’ll ever have.

Watermelon-Lime-Basil-sicles

These popsicles are awesome not only because they taste uh-may-zing, but also because there is no sugar. Like, none. So, yes, you can totally eat them for breakfast. Duh.

Ingredients

2 cups watermelon cubes

juice of 1/2 lime

a few basil leaves

Instructions

Stick everything in a tall cup and blend. Pour into dixie cups or popsicle molds, pop a stick in the top, and freeze for several hours or overnight.

Mango season. It’s like, the best time of the year for me. I could so easily overdose. Last year, we ended up with twenty three pounds of mangoes. TWENTY THREE. We froze them all, and used them for, like, the rest of the year until mango season started again. It was amazing. Best use of freezer space ever. I don’t know what it is about mangoes that is so ding dang delicious, but they are definitely one of my top 10 favorite fruits. And one of the things I’ll miss the most about Hawaii.

Coconut and lime are two flavors that pair really, really well with mango. And so these popsicles were born. With minimal added sugar, they are a creamy, sweet, and a little sour popsicle that could, um, definitely double as breakfast on a hot day. For sure.

Mango Coconut Cream Popsicles

Ingredients

2 cups mango chunks

2 tbsp full fat coconut milk

1 tbsp sugar

1/4 tsp lime zest

1 tsp lime juice

Blend everything together, pour into dixie cups or popsicle molds. Place sticks in the top, and freeze for several hours or up to overnight. Pop out and enjoy! Makes 6 dixie-cup size popsicles [probably 4 popsicle mold-sized pops].

So, I’ve told you about this before. Kind of. But before you go getting all, “Ugh, are you running out of ideas or what, Erin?!” just, give me a minute. Because you see, the first time I made this, it was kind of by accident and I kind of forgot about it afterwards. And I just, I don’t want you to make the same mistake.

So, we’ve been drinking this, uh, pretty much everyday. We ran a half marathon recently and, I swear to you, these smoothies saved me the whole time we were training. They are packed with protein, they’re sweet and peanut buttery and ugh. So good. Just, make one. Trust.

My favorite Peanut Butter Smoothie

Ingredients

1/2 cup frozen banana chunks (probably about 1 regular size banana)

a few chunks of frozen mango

a big ol’ scoop of greek yogurt

a big ol’ scoop of peanut butter

milk as needed (I start with about 1/4 cup and add more if it looks tooo thick

Blend. Drink. Yum.

Also, um, this is what happens when you try to take pictures of yourself with your camera on self timer on a windy day because you’re home alone. It happens.

I’ve made hummus before. It’s delicious. It’s easy. It’s healthy. And it is both a fabulous snack or the base of a meal if you, say, are lazy and can’t bother to make real food for yourself when your boyfriend goes away for work for 10 days and you’re left home alone to fend for yourself. Or. Whatever.

So, the thing is, a lot of hummus-es (hummusi? What the heck is the plural of hummus?) can be a bit gritty. And as it turns out, this is because of the skin of the chickpeas that you make hummus with. So my idol has this recipe for hummus that I made recently and, um, it’s heavenly. But you have to peel the chickpeas. Hm. It’s not that it takes very long or that it’s very difficult… but did I mention the part where I was home alone and just couldn’t be bothered to do, uh, anything more than put things into a magic bullet cup for all of my meals? Yeah well, enter white beans. They’re the greatest. Smooth and creamy and mild and just plain delicious.

Add white beans, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, salt and 1/4 cup of water to tall cup or large blender attachment. (uh, full disclosure, it’s a bit much for the tall cup.. you could half it all and do this in batches, or use the blender pitcher thing, or just cram and do a lot of shakin’ it.)

Pulse and blend, shaking as necessary, until you have a smooth and creamy hummus, adding more water (or lemon juice) 1 tbsp at a time if it looks too thick.

To serve, spoon hummus into a bowl, drizzle with good olive oil, and sprinkle with some paprika (unless yours has been subjected to the humidity of Hawaii for as long as ours has, and uh, isn’t any good). Serve with pita bread wedges or crunchy veggie sticks. Enjoy!